Indonesia’s plan to convert over 5 million acres of conservation and indigenous lands into agriculture will cause long-term damage to the environment, create conflict and add to greenhouse gas emissions, according to a feasibility study document for the Papua region mega-project.
The 96-page presentation reviewed by Radio Free Asia was drawn up by Sucofindo, the Indonesian government’s inspection and land surveying company. Dated July 4, it analyzes the risks and benefits of the sugar cane and rice estate in Merauke regency on Indonesia’s border with Papua New Guinea and outlines a feasibility study that was to be completed by mid-August.
Though replete with warnings that “comprehensive” environmental impact assessments should take place before any land is cleared, the feasibility process appears to have been a box-ticking exercise. Sucofindo did not respond to questions from RFA, a news service affiliated with BenarNews, about the document.
Even before the study was completed, then-President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo participated in a ceremony in Merauke on July 23 that marked the first sugar cane planting on land cleared of forest for the food estate, the government said in a statement. Jokowi’s decade-long presidency ended last month.
In late July, dozens of excavators shipped by boat were unloaded in the Ilyawab district of Merauke where they destroyed villages and cleared forests and wetlands for rice fields, according to a report by civil society organization Pusaka.
Hipolitus Wangge, an Indonesian politics researcher at Australian National University, told RFA the feasibility study document does not provide new information about the agricultural plans. But it makes it clear, he said, that in government there is “no specific response on how the state deals with indigenous concerns” and their consequences.
The plan to convert as much as 5.7 million acres of forest, wetland and savannah into rice farms, sugarcane plantations and related infrastructure in the conflict-prone Papua region is part of the government’s ambitions to achieve food and energy self-sufficiency. Previous efforts in the nation of 270 million people have fallen short of expectations.
Echoing government and military statements, Sucofindo said increasingly extreme climate change and the risk of international conflict are reasons why Indonesia should reduce reliance on food imports.
Taken together, the sugarcane and rice projects represent at least a fifth of a 10,000 square km (38,600 square mile) lowland area known as the TransFly that spans Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and which conservationists say is an already under-threat conservation treasure.
Indonesia’s military has a leading role in the 2.47 million acre rice plan while the government has courted investors for the sugar cane and related bioethanol projects.
The likelihood of conflict with indigenous Papuans or of significant and long-term environmental damage applies in about 80% of the area targeted for development, according to Sucofindo’s analysis.
The project’s “issues and challenges,” Sucofindo said, include “deforestation and biodiversity loss, destruction of flora and fauna habitats and loss of species.”
It warns of long-term land degradation and erosion as well as water pollution and reduced water availability during the dry season caused by deforestation.
Sucofindo said indigenous communities in Merauke rely on forests for livelihoods and land conversion will threaten their cultural survival. It repeatedly warns of the risk of conflict, which it says could stem from evictions and relocation.
“Evictions have the potential to destabilize social and economic conditions,” Sucofindo said in its presentation.
If the entire area planned for development is cleared, it would add about 392 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere in net terms, according to Sucofindo.
That’s about equal to half of the additional carbon emitted by Indonesia’s fire catastrophe in 2015 when hundreds of thousands of acres of peatlands drained for pulpwood and oil palm plantations burned for months.
Indonesia’s contribution to emissions that raise the average global temperature is significantly worsened by a combination of peatland fires and deforestation. Carbon stored in its globally important tropical forests is released when cut down for palm oil, pulpwood and other plantations.
In a speech on Monday to the annual United Nations climate conference, Indonesia’s climate envoy, a brother of recently inaugurated president Prabowo Subianto, said the new administration has a long-term goal to restore forests to 31.3 million acres severely degraded by fires in 2015 and earlier massive burnings in the 1980s and 1990s.
Indonesia’s government has made the same promise in previous years including in its official progress report on its national contribution to achieving the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the rise in average global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius.
“President Prabowo has approved in principle a program of massive reforestation to these 12.7 million hectares in a biodiverse manner,” envoy Hashim Djojohadikusumo said during the livestreamed speech from Baku, Azerbaijan. “We will soon embark on this program.”
Prabowo’s government has announced plans to encourage outsiders to migrate to Merauke and other parts of Indonesia’s easternmost region, state media reported this month.
Critics said such large-scale movements of people would further marginalize indigenous Papuans in their own lands and exacerbate conflict that has simmered since Indonesia took control of the region in the late 1960s.
An exiled West Papuan leader has called on supporters globally to show their support by raising the Morning Star flag — banned by Indonesia — on December 1.
“Whether in your house, your workplace, the beach, the mountains or anywhere else, please raise our flag and send us a picture,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.
“By doing so, you give West Papuans strength and courage and show us we are not alone.”
The plea came in response to a dramatic step-up in military reinforcements for the Melanesian region by new President Prabowo Subianto, who was inaugurated last month, in an apparent signal for a new crackdown on colonised Papuans.
January 1 almost 63 years ago was when the Morning Star flag of independence was flown for the first time in the former Dutch colony. However, Indonesia took over in a so-called “Act of Free Choice” that has been widely condemned as a sham.
“The situation in occupied West Papua is on a knife edge,” said the UK-based Wenda in a statement on the ULMWP website.
He added that President Prabowo had announced the return of a “genocidal transmigration settlement policy”.
Indigenous people a minority
“From the 1970s, transmigration brought hundreds of thousands of Javanese settlers into West Papua, ultimately making the Indigenous people a minority in our own land,” Wenda said.
“At the same time, Prabowo [is sending] thousands of soldiers to Merauke to safeguard the destruction of our ancestral forest for a set of gigantic ecocidal developments.
“Five million hectares of Papuan forest are set to be ripped down for sugarcane and rice plantations.
“West Papuans are resisting Prabowo’s plan to wipe us out, but we need all our supporters to stand beside us as we battle this terrifying new threat.”
The Morning Star is illegal in West Papua and frequently protesters who have breached this law have faced heavy jail sentences.
“If we raise [the flag], paint it on our faces, draw it on a banner, or even wear its colours on a bracelet, we can face up to 15 or 20 years in prison.
“This is why we need people to fly the flag for us. As ever, we will be proudly flying the Morning Star above Oxford Town Hall. But we want to see our supporters hold flag raisings everywhere — on every continent.
‘Inhabiting our struggle’
“Whenever you raise the flag, you are inhabiting the spirit of our struggle.”
Wenda appealed to everyone in West Papua — “whether you are in the cities, the villages, or living as a refugee or fighter in the bush” — to make December 1 a day of prayer and reflection on the struggle.
“We remember our ancestors and those who have been killed by the Indonesian coloniser, and strengthen our resolve to carry on fighting for Merdeka — our independence.”
Wenda said the peaceful struggle was making “great strides forward” with a constitution, a cabinet operating on the ground, and a provisional government with a people’s mandate.
“We know that one day soon the Morning Star will fly freely in our West Papuan homeland,” he said.
“But for now, West Papuans risk arrest and imprisonment if we wave our national flag. We need our supporters around the world to fly it for us, as we look forward to a Free West Papua.”
- Wenda appealed to people to send their flag-raising pictures to: office@freewestpapua.org